had already been hotly engaged with a brigade
composed of the 60th Virginia and some regiments from Louisiana. That
brigade was down in the cut, having exhausted their ammunition, and it
would have been captured but for our timely arrival, which filled them
with rejoicing. In that charge the saber was knocked from my uplifted
hand, and falling it stuck in the ground some paces behind me.

The brigade did not cross the cut, but a few of the men clambered over
and I among them. There was a cannon over there which they pulled back
with all the hilarity of college students, some riding astraddle the
piece, cheering, and waving their caps.

We had no sooner recrossed the cut and regained our places in the line
than the grand spectacle of dense columns of Pope's army coming to the
assault was witnessed. In perfect array, they kept step as if on dress
parade, and bore their banners proudly. I looked for a terrific shock,
but before they came to close quarters with us, the Confederate
artillery, massed on high ground behind us, opened upon their closed
ranks, and wrought such fearful destruction as, I believe, was not
dealt in any other battle of the entire war. Shells burst among them so
thick and fast that in a few minutes the field was literally strewn with
the killed and wounded. They halted, they turned, they fled; and Lee's
whole army assuming the offensive, rushed forward and won the battle.

General Pope was going to hoist the Stars and Stripes above the capitol
in Richmond, but he came no nearer to the city than Cedar Run. His men
were brave, but from first to last he was mystified by Lee's superior
strategy. A prisoner said to me, "If we had your Jackson, we would soon
whip you." And I will express the opinion that if the Army of the
Potomac had been commanded by generals who were the equals of Lee and
Jackson the Southern Confederacy would have collapsed before April,
1865; and sooner still if Lee and Jackson had led the Northern armies,
while the Confederates were marshaled by leaders of Pope's caliber.

CHAPTER VI

'Tis the soldiers' life
To have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.
--SHAKESPEARE'S _Othello_.

Our next encounter with the Yankees occurred on the first day of
September at a place called Ox Hill, near Chantilly on the Little River
turnpike, in which they sustained a heavy loss in the death of General
Philip Kearney, one of t